The first exercises will be carried out on a Linux server called
soc1.ewi.utwente.nl. The lab PC or your laptop will act as a
terminal to connect to the server. This means that using some local
communication program, your local mouse clicks and keystrokes will
need to be forwarded to the server and that graphics from the server
will need to be shown on your local display.

Communication can be established in many ways. Assuming that the
local PC or laptop is running Microsoft Windows, the recommended way
is to use Mobaxterm. If
you are using your own computer, download and install this program
first.

Your login name for the server is your student account
(an s followed by your student
number). Only students registered to the course can login (if you are
a late registrant, you will need to request access explicitly). Your
password is your generic password for University of Twente
authentication.

Launch Mobaxterm and then subsequently click on the
session and
ssh (secure shell) buttons.
Supply
soc1.ewi.utwente.nl as the server name and your login name as
the username. Supply your password when asked for it.

If everything went well, you
should now have a shell on machine soc1.
You will launch various applications needed by the exercises using the
command line in this shell.
If you are not sufficiently at ease with Linux/Unix commands, study the
the on-line
Unix Tutorial.
u need to have a file in your Linux home directory called
.bashrc with the following contents (check the contents with
cat
.bashrc):

. ~socadmin/defaults/soc.bashrc

If you don't have it, the easiest way to achieve this is to type on
the command line:

echo ". ~socadmin/defaults/soc.bashrc" > .bashrc

You also need to have a file .bash_profile in your home
directory with content:

. ~/.bashrc

If you don't have it, the easiest way to achieve this is to type on
the command line:

echo ". ~/.bashrc" > .bash_profile

After you have created the files .bashrc and
.bash_profile with the correct content, log out (type
exit) and reconnect.

The following screenshot for a Mobaxterm connection displays a correct
configuration ready to launch the tools.

The blue-and-red command prompt on a white
background is a sign that soc.bashrc has been correctly sourced.
In the prompt, you should see your own login name instead
socadmin.
The
two cat commands confirm that .bash_profile and
.bashrc have the corect contents.

The file ~socadmin/defaults/soc.bashrc takes care of
everything
you need for the projects. It runs the
necessary tool start-up scripts and sets environment variables. You
should not attempt to run start-up scripts or set environment
variables by yourself!

For printing, you should use the University of Twente generic
facilities.
To copy
PostScript or PDF files that have been generated on the Linux server
(actually, just any file), you can use Mobaxterm as well. You
can set up a separate SFTP (secure FTP) session or make use of
the SFTP tab connected to your ssh session.

On the Linux server, you can convert PostScript into PDF by means
of the command ps2pdf. You can convert a VHDL
text file into a nicely prettyprinted PDF document by means of
vhd2pdf. You can use acroread or
okular to view PDF documents.